Scored for strings and a bell tuned to A, the work begins with three beats of silence. Then, very softly and very slowly, the bell is struck. Three times it rings out and dies away, and it continues to be rung almost all the way through the piece, mostly in groups of three notes, and gradually becoming louder. The other instruments, 1st and 2nd violins, viola, cello, and double bass, enter one at a time. They each play the same melody – a simple descending A minor scale – but each plays it progressively more slowly in the ratio 1:2:4:8:16, so that the double basses are playing at 1/16 of the speed of the 1st violins. This is an old form called a mensuration canon, which was popular in Renaissance music. The first violins start at the upper limit of their range, playing the first note, then repeatedly descending through the A minor scale, adding a note each time. The melody seems, at first tentatively but then more confidently, to probe downwards into the lower registers. Each instrument begins softly, but by stages increases in volume until at the end they are all playing fortissimo. Each voice except the violas is split into two (and at times four) parts, with one playing the A minor scale, and the other providing a kind of anchor by playing only notes from an A minor chord. This produces a sort of spiralling effect, with pulses of tension and release.  Each voice, then, is questing downwards, with its final destination being a particular note from a chord of A minor. The violins, having started first, are the first to reach their note and, having arrived, they simply play that note continuously until the end – a duration of 250 beats. As the other instruments find their pitch the effect is like the finishing of a jigsaw puzzle. At the same time as the violas find their note, the bell lapses into silence. There is a definite, strong sense of finality when the double basses find the low A that completes the final chord, resolving the last dissonance. And so we reach a point where each of 6 voices (the cellos are still paired) is playing, at full volume, an A minor chord at a very low pitch, which continues for 30 beats. Then suddenly, on the first beat of the last bar, the bell is struck very softly, too softly to be heard above the strings. The strings stop, so that we are left with the sound of the bell softly ringing and dying away into silence once more. The result is a sonorous tapestry, swirling with colour and unexpected conjunctions of tension and relaxation, which result from the structure of the canon itself.

Te Deum in E: Benjamin Britten

This work, written in two days in November 1944 for the centenary festival of St Mark’s in Swindon, and often known as the Festival Te Deum, is quite a contrast to the earlier C major setting.  The work begins with unison passages which, although very strictly notated, conjure up the image of free-flowing plainsong.  This, coupled with a rhythmically independent organ part, gives the impression of music without any sense of a regular pulse – a sensation which continues right up until the section of text which is in praise of Christ. Here the choral parts burst into a series of highly rhythmic and energetically charged a cappella exclamations, punctuated by loud organ outbursts. This lasts until words from Psalm 28 appear, at which point the mood changes and the opening material, with its sense of pulselessness, returns, this time in the hands of a soprano solo. A warm rich choral passage takes over at the words “vouchsafe O Lord”, gradually building to the work’s climax in the final line, before calm is restored by the solo soprano. 

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